One of the easiest ways to lose marks in English examinations is through spelling mistakes. Many students can explain a grammar rule correctly and write good essays, yet they still lose marks because they misspell words such as accommodation, committee, embarrassment, commission, and possession. These words belong to a special group that I like to call double-double words.
A double-double word is a word that contains two sets of double letters. For example, in accommodation, we have cc and mm. In committee, we have mm and tt. Because there are two doubled letters in the same word, students often forget one of them when writing.
Consider the word accommodation. Many students write it as accomodation, forgetting one of the letters m. Others write acommodation, forgetting one of the letters c. The correct spelling is accommodation because both cc and mm must appear in the word.
The same thing happens with embarrassment. Some students write embarassment with one r, while others write embarrasment with one s. The correct spelling is embarrassment because the word contains both rr and ss.
Words with cc and mm
- accommodation
- accommodate
Words with mm and tt
- committee
- committed
Words with rr and ss
- embarrass
- embarrassed
- embarrassing
- embarrassment
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Words with cc and ss
- success
- successful
- unsuccessfully
- successor
- succession
- accessible
- accessory
Words with ss and pp
- Mississippi
- misspell
- misspelled
- misspelling
Words with rr and ll
- guerrilla
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Words with mm + ss
- commission
- commissioner
- commissioned
Words with bb + ll
- dumbbell
Words with ss + ss
- possession
- possessive
- possessed
- possessing
- possessiveness
- assassinate
Words with ll + nn
- millennium
Words with nn + ss
- unnecessary
- keenness
- suddenness
Words with gg and ss
- aggressive
- aggressor
- aggression
Words with ll + ss
- silliness
Words with rr + nn
- barrenness
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A useful trick is to train yourself to look for pairs. Whenever you come across a long word that students frequently misspell, check whether it contains two sets of double letters. In many cases, the spelling problem is not a difficult English word; it is simply a forgotten pair of letters.
Therefore, instead of memorising each word separately, remember the pattern. Think of accommodation as cc + mm, committee as mm + tt, embarrassment as rr + ss, commission as mm + ss, and possession as ss + ss. Once you see the pattern, the spelling becomes easier to remember and harder to forget.
I would like to highlight words like 'BEGINNING', 'PROCESSION', 'OCCASION', 'HARASSMENT', and 'UNPARALLELED' which do not follow this pattern.
